El libro de los motes

Only Federico Jiménez Losantos, who for decades has rescued the nickname from its humble, anonymous origins and restored to it, on radio and in the press, the playful prestige and erudite wit of Quevedo, could write *The Book of Nicknames*. And he has not only compiled a wide selection of nicknames for politicians and powerful figures, organized by legislative term, but, in a lengthy and engaging prologue, he offers us the history of the nickname in Spanish, the golden age of satire, the era of the rivalry between the two great poets of the Golden Age, Góngora and Quevedo, as well as the absurd turn that this burlesque contest ultimately took. In the end, according to the author, the nickname is the latest word in the age of the meme, a world hijacked by the image, the tool that the Spanish language provides to the witty poor man to ridicule the powerful.